My son reads a lot, and I mean a lot. The bookshelf he’s had in his bedroom was my old bookshelf from when I was a kid. It was too small and did not hold all of his books, and it was literally falling apart. We told him that we would build him a new one and he was happy to help.
His old bookshelf really needed help. Actually, it just needed to be thrown away. This photo makes it look pretty good.
So let’s take a look at how we made it…
We picked up some pine boards from our local DIY hardware store. I prefer to go to a place such as Woodcraft, but I made a bookshelf for our daughter years ago and wanted to make them similar. Regardless of the wood, it’s important to start with a good straight edge. I have a piece of MDF that I use for this, and I secure the board to it using some double-sided tape. It’s then trimmed with a flush-trim router bit.
Once I have a straight edge on each piece I can move to the table saw to cut the other side. Because each board is not exactly the same as the others, I used the most narrow board to set the fence. I was less concerned with an exact depth for the bookshelf than I was with making sure each was the same. Running each board through the table saw verifies that not only are the boards the same, but the front and back edges are parallel.
Each board was cut on one side to make sure I had a 90-degree angle. I then cut the sides to about three feet tall (both the same of course), and the top, bottom, and each shelf were cut to about four feet long (again, all the same).
Both sides were clamped together to cut the recess for the shelves. Because the boards are 3/4-inch thick, I used a 3/4-inch router bit. If they did not happen to be the same, I would’ve either planed the boards to that thickness, or adjusted slightly and made another pass with the router. Most likely I would plane the boards down to the size I want.
The bottom was measured two inches up. The shelves then progressed from 12 inches to 10 inches in height as they went up.
Each face was sanded with 60-grit and 110-grit sandpaper. Before the final sanding, we sprayed the surface with water to pre-raise the wood grain. Then it is given a final sanding with 220-grit sandpaper. This is to make sure that the grain is not raised when you apply stain, which keeps a nice, smooth surface.
Before the final glue-up, it’s important to do a dry fit. One reason is to make sure everything fits well together, but as I mention in the video, I also use it to make sure that my glue sequence is correct, and to verify the best way to secure everything together.
Since the boards we used were a little askew, they did not fit as well as I normally like. I found in the dry fit step that it was better to press things together with the clamps than to whack it with a mallet. The top of the bookshelf was secured with 18-gauge brad nails instead of clamps.
For the majority of the bookshelf we used Titebond III wood glue, which provides a strong bond. After the glue-up, we stained the shelf with General Finishes water based espresso stain. The order of operations for this bookshelf was probably a little different than I should’ve done.
My thought was that we could have it flat on the workbench, but this didn’t work out the way I wanted. Some projects are easier to glue first and stain after, and others are better the other way. I think I chose the wrong way.
While we were waiting for the stain to dry, and while my son was in school, I added a Roman ogee contour to the face pieces per his request. I haven’t used that router bit from a set that I have, so this was a good excuse to try it out.
We put a ledge around the top because the cats keep knocking objects off my son’s bookshelf. This meant that I extended the top face piece slightly above the top of the bookshelf. I wanted to blend it in, so I continued the design from the side ledge pieces to the top face piece. I then used a coping saw to cut the shape and a file for more precision.
All of the face pieces received the same stain as the rest of the bookshelf. The espresso stain is very dark, and a single coat is all that is needed, in my opinion. I’ve used this stain on previous projects, and when I used it on a table we have, two coats was too much.
We used General Finishes water based satin topcoat for the finish. We applied 3 coats of this to make sure that it has a nice protective layer. Between each coat I smoothed it out with a fine-grit paper.
When gluing the face pieces, we started at the bottom and worked our way up. For this we used Titebond II wood glue. It sets up a little quicker so we could move on a little. We left it clamped for about an hour and then moved on to the next section. Regardless of the wood glue, it’s best to leave it for at least 12 hours before putting any stress onto the joints. The back was glued and brad-nailed in place (see the video).
So here it is all put together. It looks like he has some room to add to it so maybe I will have a little while before I need to build something else. Thank you for checking out the post. The video is available for reference as well. I hope this is able to provide some help and inspiration.